The Brother HL-L2390DW ($149.99) is a no-frills, entry-level monochrome laser all-in-one (AIO) printer designed for small and home-based offices with low-print-and-copy-volume requirements. It has a lower price tag, and is faster and less expensive to use than the Editors' Choice Canon ImageClass MF249dw and the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M130fw. On the other hand, the Brother model is short on a few key features, such as an automatic document feeder (ADF) for sending multipage originals to the scanner. While the HL-L2390DW is not the fastest entry-level monochrome laser out there, it's plenty fast enough for what it is, and it delivers competitively low running costs, making it a good choice for low-to-moderate-volume printing and copying in small and home-based offices, or as a personal monochrome laser printer.

Lean, Petite Machine

Part of a recent seven-machine debut of lower-end Brother monochrome laser single-function and AIO printers, the HL-L2390DW is positioned near the center of this tightly knit group of products, whose pricing ranges from about $120 to $200. Given that it leans toward the lower end of that price range, the HL-L2390DW consequently ships with one of the lowest paper-input capacities and one of the smaller feature sets among its siblings. It measures 10.7 by 15.7 by 10.7 inches (HWD) and weighs only 22.7 pounds, thereby commanding one of the smaller footprints among this latest release of Brother laser printers.

Canon's similarly configured ImageClass MF249dw is just a few inches taller and longer than the HL-L2390DW, and weighs about 3 pounds more, but it comes with a 50-sheet auto-duplexing ADF. Auto-duplexing means that the machine can scan both sides of a two-sided document without you having to turn them over manually. The HP M130fw comes with a slightly smaller capacity, non-auto-duplexing ADF (35 sheets), and the machine itself is significantly smaller and lighter.

The HL-L2390DW's paper capacity consists of 251 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main drawer and a one-sheet override slot; both support up to legal-size paper (8.5 by 14 inches). In addition, of the other entry-level monochrome lasers discussed here so far, all but HP's M130fw come with the same paper input configuration. (The M130fw's sole input tray holds only 150 sheets.) The HL-L2390DW's maximum monthly duty cycle is 15,000 pages, with up to 2,000 pages recommended. Once again, this is the same as the Canon MF249dw and 5,000 pages higher than the HP M130fw's duty cycle.

Input configuration, connectivity, and walkup tasks, such as making copies or printing from a cloud site, are handled on the HL-L2390DW via a monochrome non-touch display surrounded by a handful of buttons; the Canon MF249dw has a similar control panel. The HP M130fw sports a 2.7-inch color touch screen control panel, giving it the most superior, easiest-to-use panel among these entry-level monochrome laser AIOs.

Setup, Connectivity, Software

Typically, laser AIOs are big, bulky, and hard to get out of their boxes, and require you to find a relatively wide, sturdy surface from which to stage them. That's not the case with the HL-L2390DW. Within just a few minutes, I had it plugged in, powered up, loaded with paper, and ready to connect to our standard Intel Core i5-equipped PC running Windows 10 Professional. The HL-L2390DW doesn't support Ethernet, which is unusual for a laser (or most other business-oriented printers, for that matter), though it does support Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct. In addition, it does not support USB thumb drives or any other memory devices.

Brother provides its own mobile device connectivity through its iPrint&Scan mobile app for connecting to cloud sites. Other third-party configuration connectivity options include: Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and others. Supported security options, such as monitoring and configuring the printer itself over a secure Web server (HTTPS and SSL) protocols are available from nearly every Web-connected workstation and all mobile devices.

And finally, in addition to the standard Brother drivers for Windows and MacOS, you get Nuance PaperPort 14SE w/ OCR for Windows (available via download), a fairly robust document-management program that helps turn your scanned text to editable text for several different types of applications, including document archiving.

Fast for the Price

Brother rates the HL-L2390DW at 32 pages per minute (ppm), which fringes on blazing for an entry-level model like this. That's 4ppm faster than the Canon ImageClass D570 and 16ppm ahead of the Canon MF249dw. While printing our 12-page Microsoft Word monochrome text document, the HL-L2390dw churned at the rate of 33.8ppm, or almost 2ppm faster than its rating. It also beat the Canon D570 by about 5ppm, the Canon MF249dw by about 6ppm, and HP's M130fw by about 18ppm—a strong showing all around. (I should also point out that the Canon MF227dw was tested under an earlier benchmarking regimen with different software and test documents; using those results here for comparison wouldn't be practical.)

When I combined the results from the previous 12-page Word document with those from printing our several Acrobat, PowerPoint, an Excel files containing color, graphics, and bitmap images, the HL-L2390dw managed 10.6ppm on this portion of our test, which, this time, was nearly 6ppm slower than the Canon MF249dw and the Canon D570. The HP M130fw, too, managed only 10.5ppm at this juncture in our benchmarking regimen.

I also timed how long it took to print our two 4-by-6-inch sample snapshots. I printed two highly detailed and colorful images several times, averaging the results. The HL-L2390DW printed our sample images in 12 seconds, which is about 4 or 5 seconds slower than the other monochrome laser printers mentioned in this review. That's more than fast enough for churning out these small grayscale images.

Terrific Type and Grayscale

What the HL-L2390DW lacks in features and capacity, it makes up for in output quality and speed. The text in our sample documents came out well-shaped and highly legible almost all the way down to the smallest type size we test—4 points.

Our full-page, grayscale business graphics and documents containing embedded photos printed well, too. For the most part, fills were solid, with minimal banding, and hairlines printed unbroken from end to end. I did, however, notice in some charts that the delineation of grayscale from one shade to the next was sometimes abrupt. In other words, I've seen better-delineated grayscale in the drawings produced on competing models, especially the Canon MF249dw and D570.

Graphics were about average, which isn't bad considering that all you need is grayscale output, which is also true of the HL-L2390dw's photo output. It's fine for in-house handouts and such, but probably not the best when you're trying to impress would-be clients or customers.

Average Running Costs

Lower-end laser printers, monochrome or otherwise, tend to cost a little too much to use, and at 3.6 cents per page (CPP), the HL-L2390DW is about run of the mill. Keep in mind that for every 10,000 pages you print, a 1-cent difference in per-page running costs will run about $100. In comparison, the HP M130fw's cost per page is about 3.9 cents; the Canon D570 is about 3.5 CPP. In other words, the HL-L2390DW's running costs are about average. If page costs are your concern, you might be better off with a higher-end laser model.

A Nifty Little Print and Copy Appliance

The Brother HL-L2390DW is an inexpensive, small, and reasonably fast monochrome AIO printer. It prints and copies more than adequately for in-house distribution and for front-counter quotes and receipts, although an ADF would provide greater value in some scenarios. Several competing models, including our top pick, the Canon ImageClass MF249dw, come with an ADF; and if you need good-looking black and grayscale graphics, you should consider the Canon MF249dw and some other entry-level Canon models, such as, say, the ImageClass D570. If all you need is decent monochrome prints with the occasional copy thrown in at a reasonable cost per page, the Brother HL-L2390DW should serve your entry-level print needs well, especially for text documents and simple graphics.

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About the Author

William Harrel is a contributing editor focusing on printer and scanner technology and reviews. He has been writing about computer technology since well before the advent of the internet. He has authored or coauthored 20 books—including titles in the popular "Bible," "Secrets," and "For Dummies" series—on digital design and desktop publishing softw... See Full Bio

Brother HL-L2390DW

Brother HL-L2390DW

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